Today, I’m thankful for liberty

The Stars and Stripes might have a pretty bad rep at home these days, at least among those who see it as a symbol of racism, but you can still find people abroad who are pretty fond of it.

The videos below popped up on my Twitter feed this morning. The people of Hong Kong – who live under a genuinely oppressive regime – still see the Stars and Stripes as a symbol of liberty. That ought to make Americans proud.

https://twitter.com/TheSpeaker2018/status/1200095359445258241

https://twitter.com/PolitiKurd/status/1200200943356305408

Sure, the federal government is much bigger, both more pervasive and invasive, than the Founding Fathers intended. ‘We’re freer than the Chinese’ is a pretty low bar.

But, however imperfectly and however beleaguered, liberty survives here in the United States better than almost anywhere else in the world. That is why, despite the claims of those who paint it as some racist hellhole where everyone except Jeff Bezos lives in poverty, more than 750 million people worldwide would migrate here if they could. Some hellhole.

This liberty is something to be fought for. It is also something to be thankful for.

John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment.